The liberal inclination to wage culture war in schools would be unwelcome even under normal circumstances. But with schools across the country failing to perform the basic task of teaching students, those culture war battles become outright irresponsible.
This was put on display in Los Angeles County. The Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District was recently considering whether to open a Planned Parenthood clinic at John Glenn High School. The board of education decided to postpone discussion on the proposal on Monday. Abortion was not listed as a service the clinic would provide, but it would make referrals for procedures at other Planned Parenthood locations.
Regardless of what services the clinic would or would not offer, Planned Parenthood is an abortion company. The organization has a vested interest in promoting abortion, and the number of people seeking non-abortion services at its facilities — contraception, cancer screenings, and prenatal care — has declined over the last decade. Planned Parenthood owns an increasingly large share of the abortion market, and the organization received over $617 million in taxpayer funding in 2019, thanks to its political alliance with the Democratic Party.
While the school board wastes time wondering whether to house an abortion mill that is going to spend millions to elect Democrats in the midterm elections, the district’s academic scores are appalling. According to Public School Review, the four high schools in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District have an average math proficiency score of 22% and a reading proficiency score of 41%. This is far below California’s already poor state averages.
John Glenn High School, specifically, ranks in the bottom 50% in both categories, scoring 18 points below the state average proficiency in math and 15 points below the average in reading. Improving those numbers should be the main priority in the district and take up much of the board’s attention. But it isn’t.
California, in particular, tends to ignore the poor academic record of its schools, even as it wastes valuable resources imposing leftist cultural priorities on education. In Salinas, the school district imposed critical race theory on its majority-minority student body, tanking their grades in the process
. California recently received an award for promoting “equity” in schools, even though the state has consistently ranked near the bottom in all relevant education metrics for years.
The first and arguably only priority of any school board or school district should be to ensure that students receive a good education. To the extent that other factors can be considered, social justice curricula and woke corporations like Planned Parenthood should not even make the list of priorities.
Promoting liberal activism in schools doesn’t help students. It hurts them. Prioritizing liberal activism when those schools are already failing to provide a good education only makes those issues worse.